Department of Public Administration

About Department of Public Administration

The Department of Public Administration was set up in the year 1961. It has the distinction of being one of the oldest departments in the discipline of public administration in the country. The Department has a very impressive record to its credit. The Department, since its inception, has been actively engaged in quality teaching, research and training as well as consultancy in the applied fields of Public Administration.

Among the alumni of this Department who are/were occupying high positions in various walks of life are Dr.M.S.Gill, Former Chief Election Commissioner, presently Minister of Sports; Dr.Dinesh Chandra, Former Additional Secretary, Government of India; Dr. G.S.Aujla, Additional Director General Police, Punjab; University Teachers; and central and state government/public enterprise officials. The alumni of the Department are also well placed in various countries like Thailand, Nepal, Bangladesh, Iran, Kenya, etc.
The activities of the Department can be grouped into four inter-related categories: Teaching, Research, Training/Refresher Courses and Consultancy.

Teaching: The Department has regular full-time courses for MA and M.Phil. The Masters’ programme in Public Administration is job oriented in nature and multi-disciplinary in approach. The sequence of the courses has been scientifically planned so that it constitutes building blocks for four groups of specialization that are taught with special reference to India:

Group A: Applied Development Administration (with special reference to India)

Group B: Economic Administration (with special reference to India)

Group C: Human Resource Management (with special reference to India)

Group D: Administrative Management (with special reference to India)

The diversified course content has made the courses popular both in and outside India. The Department has been attracting students from Thailand, Nepal, Bhutan and Sri Lanka. Earlier a large number of African, Mauritian and Iranian students were regularly enrolled in the Department. Some of the foreign students are sponsored under cultural exchange programmes. Against 57 seats, the department normally receives around 300 applications. The M.Phil. Course has been designed with a view to impart knowledge of recent advances in the discipline and to train the students in the field of research methodology.

Students are provided the opportunity to develop their leadership, organisational and decision-making skills through the membership and activities of the Administrative Sciences Society of the Department.

Research
The Department undertakes three types of research activities:

Ph.D. Programme: The Department provides facilities for research leading to a doctoral degree from the Faculty of Arts. The main sources of enrolment are:

Fresh students from Panjab University and other universities who have qualified National Education Test (NET) conducted by the U.G.C.;

Civil Servants and officers from Public and Cooperative Sectors; and

Candidates from other countries, including those under the Cultural Exchange Programme.

The Department has successfully supervised over 100 Ph.D. scholars who have worked on various facets of the discipline. Barring a few, Ph.D. theses are survey based focusing on the analysis and solutions of practical problems of administration in developing countries.

The success rate of the students qualifying the UGC NET is very high.

Research Projects: The faculty of the Department is engaged in a number of research projects funded by various regional, national and international agencies like Government of Punjab, UGC, British Council, The Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute. (Annexure-VII).

Individual Research: The faculty and research scholars are engaged in individual research as well. A large number of research papers, books, monographs and articles have been published nationally and internationally as a result of this.